Madame Web director explains the movie’s missing origin stories

Madame Web features several different Spidey characters, and the director has explained the reason why the Spider-Women don’t get much of the spotlight.

Following a disappointing opening weekend, Madame Web is in an awkward spot. Enough fans have now seen the Spider-Man spin-off to have picked it apart within an inch of its life, and most have been vocal about how much they dislike the new movie.

The newest installment in the Sony Spider-Man Universe follows Cassandra Webb, who later goes onto become the titular Madame Web. However, there are also three other leads: Julia, Mattie, and Anya. They themselves go onto become different iterations of Spider-Women, but this isn’t shown in the movie, save for a few glimpses.

Focusing on this group of future heroes while ditching their backstory might seem like an unusual angle, but director S.J. Clarkson has a good reason for doing so.

S.J. Clarkson explains the lack of Madame Web origin stories

S.J. Clarkson said that it would have been “greedy” to include origin stories for all the Spider-Women, especially since the central plot revolved around Cassandra and her journey.

“Well, I thought it would be a bit greedy to do four origin stories,” Clarkson told ComicBook.com. “That’s not really fair, is it? I’ve got to share it. Come on. I mean, first and foremost, it’s Madame Web, right? But I hope the exciting thing about it is, this is a tease. And I think the origin story of the girls, we’re given, hopefully, a hint of the spirit of who they are.”

Sony Pictures

“I think it wouldn’t do any of them justice to try and sort of crowbar or cram it all into one movie. So I think it’s Madame Web’s, and here’s kind of the development of something else underneath it. But yeah, I thought that was probably too greedy. They’d be like, ‘Get out.'”

With Cassandra serving as the movie’s main protagonist, there’s already a focus on Madame Web. However, a lot of the marketing for the film included images of the girls as their Spider-Women alter-egos, leaving fans a little confused as to why the movie didn’t spend a lot of time on their hero personas.

It’s possible that Sony was looking ahead, laying the groundwork to spin-off to each of the girls at some point in the future. But with the current response to Madame Web, that’s looking a little unlikely.